TOTW: As The Wheel Turns

History says the revolution attains “permanence,” or at least duration, while the uprising is “temporary.” In this sense an uprising is like a “peak experience” as opposed to the standard of “ordinary” consciousness and experience...But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns - you can’t stay up on the roof forever - but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred - a difference is made. - Hakim Bey

With the christening of CHAZ a direct (and for some likely uncomfortable) connection was made between the ideas of Hakim Bey and the current riots/rebellions/uprisings happening across America, a connection that implies impermanence. For those of us spectating the CHAZ and various other rumored autonomous zones sprouting up around the country, it’s hard to tell what is truly happening, how strongly these areas are held and by whom. But out of a plan-for-the-worst-hope-for-the-best instinct let’s assume the CHAZ will fall, where does that leave us?

The anger caused by the state, police and capital will still be there, as will the fear and effects of Coronavirus. But there is also a new media focus on Anarchists, a lot of people seeing the United States as an enemy and a flurry of ideologues attempting to contort recent events into their analysis. How can Anarchists use this situation to our advantage? Should we? Is this the time to step up propaganda projects aimed at non-anarchists? The time to bring in new blood to our scenes? Or perhaps this is another example of over-exposing ourselves, and instead we should be battening down the hatches as a wave of oppression approaches, finding cracks and hollows that allow us to live outside of direct confrontation with the state. Tell me!

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the "defund the police" movement, i'm somewhat interested in figuring out if there's anything that can be done locally for me in this regard, as the police take such an enormous percentage of tax money...but as a skeptical anarcho-nihilist, the question is, can tax money fund anything that's more conducive to the goals of anarchists? The answer is probably no, even though there are some public expenditures that i personally prefer to the cops...not schools (that's really the fucking problems i'm having with engaging in activism again, i know that everyone i know is going to be like "LET'S TAKE THAT MONEY AND PUT IT IN EDUCATION!") but libraries, parks, etc.....free community resources. The other problem is how readily the liberal minded want to fund "fixing up the town" which just translates into gentrification.

I'd say other than that, we could continuing taking part in riots, steal, loot, vandalize, continue enjoying what we can, yet we should also be weary of getting caught up in any sort of activist/revolutionary hype that can turn us into foot soldiers for causes.

I ain't no general, these are just my thoughts...it is tempting for me to be some sort of anti-cop activist again.

Question: what made CHAZ come into fruition in Seattle?

And tear down that wall!

And abolish CHtaxes!

I mean, they already have a litany of demands (https://capitolhillaz.org/ & I misplaced the other longer list article oops), might as well add those in.

"We demand that the Seattle Council and the Mayor defund and abolish the Seattle Police Department and the attached Criminal Justice Apparatus. This means 100% of funding."

Very good! Anarchy in action!

"We demand the de-gentrification of Seattle, starting with rent control."

okay okay, i can get on board with that...that's kind of the natural consequence of getting rid of the police and courts...no one can evict or charge exorbitant prices for anything because nobody has to pay rent.

"We demand the people of Seattle proudly support Black-owned businesses."

wait, you're against gentrification but you support "black-owned" businesses?? Haven't you all learned that business and gentrification are basically the same thing?? "Black-owned" banking empire?? Would you support cops and courts if they were all "black"??

....................

Nevermind i don't think all these actions are really going anywhere except a more tepid version of the same thing.

The more you talk the more you sound like just another of them reactionary spectators, LeWay.

Got IRL?

Hi, I'm new to this site and only at 101 level regarding anarchism, but what you say seems logìcally sound, I mean, the whole anarch thing is total autonomy, and this reformationis well,,,,,WEAK,,,,,,,DAMN FREAKIN WEAK!!
Also, I did a quick research of Bey, and his extraordinary discription of autonomous zones makes CHAZ look like a libertarian liberal convention and BBQ. *Grinds heel of boot into the manicured lawn*

God damn it, Leway. No, you're not new to this site. Almost no one else says "anarch", no one else uses commas like that. You're comments are not kept up because you're any good at impersonating anyone else, but just when they don't pass a certain subjective threshold of awfulness.

Which makes me wonder -*segues back to the topic- how will the CHAZPD deal with people who become nuisances? Will the CHAZPD and the CHAZ patrol get their own CHAZ county prison or will they practice expulsion/ostracism?
Or will they just leave them be as long as they're not causing any real harm?

Is simply a way to say non-elective-proposed anarchy plain and simple. It's a way of describing a highly individuated subject who lives beyond and without hierarchy as well as the elective form of that way of living. You can find the term going back to the 1920s as describing Benjamin Decasares.

https://www.unionofegoists.com/2019/01/28/de-casseres-anarch/

It's an older term then Junger and Eumeswil.

Black capitalism baby!!!

I'm guessing these CHADZ think gentrification is just the changing of ethnic demographics

You are special and I admire that you made an attempt to be like "oooh sooo busted." It wasn't the best attempt, but it was an attempt nonetheless. I grant you a bronze participation trophy. I wasn't referencing Tulsa, but rather Durham, NC. You should read about it and the other ones, but I don't know if they're on the history channel's lol website so you might be in a jam. A lot of those pop culture history sites like the one you linked to lol leave a lot to be desired.

I'm against mandatory schooling, but better funded schools are better than less funded schools, and schools are a better use of money than cops.

Don't let the acute problem of police fool you. If you have a transcendental critique of education like I do then you know how bad school teachers are on a psycho structural level. Critiquing education as such needs to be a staple of 21st century post-modern anarchism/anarchy. You have to focus more on control and less on repression going forward and education is a 10000 year old civilized control process.

For the problem of less funded schools simply affect towards personal learning a radical regions of knowledge sharing and intercourse. I can't recommend people look up Sugata mitra's work enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk60sYrU2RU

Take away the civilized bog machine and you have a way to turn complex extra survival learning into an anarchic venture. There's also the fact that modern ed is a female dominated discourse and I would argue females are to education what males are to work at this point.

They both serve exactly the same function. You're literally taking money from one state institution and giving it to another. It's no different to taking money from cops and giving it to prisons. Or taking it from prisons and giving it to courts. A school is a police force, a court and a prison all rolled into one, just for children instead of for adults.

why? better for what?
better for letting people succeed in the system? better for lessening social unrest? better for a liberal world?
some anarchists are for those things, i guess. right?

I learned through past big uprisings and especially through their aftermaths, that what matters the most is what kind of new normal people are accepting returning to after the uprising, not the uprising itself, or its subversive intensity.

It ain't bad that some things will change, that the popo will be held more accountable, and shit. If the police cannot be reformed, it CAN be made weaker and their monopoly of "legitimate violence" being taken away. Power dynamics is what matters in society.

But police brutality is still happening every day, so dreaming about an ideal post-uprising world is like putting the cart before the wheel...

Yeah, if it somehow becomes the only place in America where (specially black and marginalized) people can feel safe from routine casual death by cops it'll be a big something, even if it's not "an anarchy".

No. I've been struggling to decide about what type of tone or attitude should I have with this.
I thought I might want to be encouraging and go easy on them.
I think that's wishful thinking, seeing so many bad things happen, wanting to see something good in the first thing that pops up. The only good thing were the things broken and set on fire. CHAZ is just a quelling down of the rage.
It's more effective than previous forms of peace police, it's a whole fucking peace police town.
How is larping sim city an appropriate response to the killing in the streets and the tortures in prison?
It's like the inverse of complaining about rioting and looting in response of these killings by police.
It's racist to put property destruction in the same equivalence as the killings by cops, it's racist to think some community garden or spare change is some kind compensation for it. That's just pretending like you solved the problem because you get scared to follow through. George Floyd is the name that sparked it for some, but the names keep being added on the list, where's the proportion? I understand people can't riot forever and that they will get tired. But I think CHAZ has to do more to the vacated premises by COVID quarantine and the mutual aid activity around it, than having any relation at all with responding to the killings by police, trying to abolish police, prisons or the state. I know bad things are always happening, so it's not as if you can stop living your life until everything bad "is fixed", but it kind feels like they're playing with sand castles (or chalk in the streets) while some people might still want to burn precincts or do actions to put pressure so they drop charges to some recently arrested. It's like there was a moment with momentum and they put it to a halt. Too eager for a "new" normality while everything is still in place as it was.

I can see how a prefigurative sandbox experiment leads to a micro state emboldening the emerging managers of CHAZ, which would need an effective anti-policing effort of quell CHAZ police in order to allow anything interesting to continue with the project.

"it's racist to think some community garden or spare change is some kind compensation for it. "

why must something like CHAZ (or future experiments) be an exclusive direct action against the extrajudicial killings by cops? is compensation the goal? are not community gardens a piece of the larger anti-state/anti-police/anti-corporate dependence exit strategy?

lol at "extrajudicial killings" as if those that are "judicial" are any better.

What I was pointing out was precisely that that kind of "experiment" is not linked to the current manifestations of outrage against the system, but rather shows a kind of conformity and satisfaction with the system as is, with some minor tweaks. This is just an update on liberalism, on par with the many marches.

The Ferguson riots were in 2014, maybe we have to wait another 6 years so that a brief outburst of rage against the police is in fashion again.

They invited the mayor to tour their community garden. I wouldn’t say this is part of a larger anarchist secession. At this point neither would the chop steering committee who’ve been working with city officials and housing developers to shrink their own space.

Just because building gardens could be radical doesn’t mean that’s what we’re seeing play out. Also a garden of their size is mostly for show unfortunately. As of now most people are relying on donations from the outside world.

Yes build autonomous zones but build them with people you’ve formed deep relationships with who won’t sell you out. The conception that autonomous zones need to be Petros dish experiments of random groups of people is false. Voluntary association is an anarchist principle but it’s also smart to fight for your liberation with those you know personally and share political affinity with.

Already lots of troubling aspects to the chaz. They’re protecting the precinct and they had the mayor come for a visit the other day. One of the more vocal organizers is a millionaire land developer who drives a Tesla. Identity politics have run rampant to the point where they’re taxing white demonstrators arbitrarily. They have allowed tons of randos to come in and do whatever. It’s like all of the failings of occupy playing out again. This is why we need to learn to do new things and stop following the crowd. Focusing people’s energy on one location is a waste of energy and honestly a smart counterinsurgency move. Much better to have widespread discontent and real temporary autonomous ruptures.

Identity politics = dominant politics on the left. This will not change until it has played out and another current takes dominance. Autonomous zones aren't going to have any purity so it is ridiculous to act like they need to look like a particular form. The point on autonomy is the organic fluidity the base structure takes on. This base structure is the composite created by the intermingling of individuals and groups that compose of the CHAZ. If micro-state features disqualifies it from being a "real" autonomous zone, then no zone has ever reached TAZ status.

But what I'm really saying is AZs aren't formed by the Committee for Critical Autonomy alone, and won't ever be completely broken from the society that hatched it. Instead its conflicts with the dominant order are based on the contradictions that created it. Black Lives Matter and identity politics mix with anarchy, activism and socialistic political parties are the parents of this autonomous zone, so it will look like it, with all its various contradictions.

Down with IdPol and the intersectional marxist ideology that created it. It's in anarchist interests to do this as quickly as possible.

i agree, idpols need to go.

however, at times like this, i would not choose to, for example, tell a black ally that they should forget their blackness and the group identity they hold with it. i am not so dogmatic that i cannot find individual empathy for the depth of their pain, even if that pain is tied to their group identity (more than their individual being - they cannot seem to separate the two). i see individuals not groups, but i cannot ignore the reality that others do not, especially when that other is my friend/ally. if i only associated with those that i share perspective with, i would be one lonely ass motherfucker. relationships are how i define my anarchy.

An understanding of identity and how the world treats people because of it can be divorced from the politics of it. Identity politics is white people following the lead of any random black person out of a deep sense of guilt. It’s traditionally oppressed people’s rising to power in social groups and taking advantage of their new position of hierarchy. It’s less a forgetting of the way society views and uses identity. I’m calling for people to acknowledge their identity with all of its complexities but to also set our sights on destroying politics in general. So we don’t bring hierarchical corrupt power relations into our own communities. At the CHOP they were asking rando white people to give 10 dollars to random black people. One of the vocalist members of the steering crew is a millionaire housing developer. Politicing is a dead end.

Do you really however want to have elective affinity with people who crutch on ID so much? There are libertarians like Kmele Foster for instance who go hard on race abolition and individual or more concrete ethic identity. I think anarchists should select for those types of thought patterns. Not every black person harbors those views. Then you have nonsense like Lantinx which only 1 percent of latinos actually identify with. It's a completely liberal chic academy position. Some people who hold to these elective ID structures are tolerable and even redeemable in other areas but I don't think this is the kind of thinking that those interested in anarchy should be placating.

I personally don't like the term ally and instead go with the better more romantic term elective affinity.

"But out of a plan-for-the-worst-hope-for-the-best instinct let’s assume the CHAZ will fall, where does that leave us?"

Right where we were. The way that"wokeness" has spread through academia, social media and mainstream culture in general in a way that mostly that of "discourse" (also know as rhetoric or just talk) has had some cosmetic implications in the ways liberals/democrats do and speak politics. It's nothing new, but it might trick newcomers or those not paying attention. Occupy TM, then Decolonize TM, then Autonomous Zone TM, then whatever it is now. They're renaming streets, and doing the most meager gestures as concessions. BLM and community leaders were peace police then, and so they are now.

"The anger caused by the state, police and capital will still be there, as will the fear and effects of Coronavirus. But there is also a new media focus on Anarchists, a lot of people seeing the United States as an enemy and a flurry of ideologues attempting to contort recent events into their analysis. How can Anarchists use this situation to our advantage?"

Anarchists have been few and harmless enough for a while in US and have for the most part gotten little mainstream attention, now you'll get 15 minutes of fame as the boogieman/scapegoat/strawman and will be persecuted and thrown under the bus by liberals everywhere.

"Should we?"

Do it if you can.

"Is this the time to step up propaganda projects aimed at non-anarchists? The time to bring in new blood to our scenes?"

Any time is a great/terrible time to do that. So yes, sure, go for it.
But:
-There's already an overabundance of people preaching and keyboard warrioring, and spectators of anarchism avidly consuming all the abundance of anarchist content from anarchist websites.
-All the anarchist "scenes" have at this point become so co-opted and so diluted, since always appealing to the lowest common denominator of liberals in order to subsist or get more numbers. So no, don't bring anyone into scenes.

"Or perhaps this is another example of over-exposing ourselves, and instead we should be battening down the hatches as a wave of oppression approaches, finding cracks and hollows that allow us to live outside of direct confrontation with the state. Tell me!"

I'd say abandon the scenes and the Internet. But that won't "do" anything, except it's the thing no one would expect you to do, because no one is doing it. Everyone is ever more online. Go to quiet places you've never gone before and leave your phone at home. Don't log in for months. Disappear until the world forgets you exist. Then pretend you don't know what politics is, nor anarchism, nor social issues, nor language. Act dumb and crazy to everyone. Your motto "The world is yours, you can have it, I don't want it." Let the activists prove you wrong and let them "fix the world" if they're so capable, plentiful and energetic. They can't say it's your fault, because you're not obstructing them.

What's the alternative? To fuck shit up. But insurrectionary propaganda is a lie, those are not easily reproducible acts by anyone. There is a barrier to entry of courage, rage, focus, decision, determination, commitment, etc. The few that do it stand out among the many.

On the other hand there is no barrier to entry (except dignity, but that can be stripped away from you) to be conforming citizen, a pushover constituent. The system makes it the default, throw formation and punishment etc etc., singles out the criminals and the deviants and neutralized them and gets rid of them.

"I'm not going to stop the wheel. I'm going to break the wheel." -Daenerys, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains

Have you railed against "idpol" for over a decade? Haven't figured out how to work with individuals that accept its premise? Have you failed to make anarchy because you can't get the numbers interested in your viewpoint, yet see idpol as somehow a vague monolith?

The problem is your quest is political. An attempt to change the moral framework of the left. At this point idpol is fully within the left and only fringe complain about its basic assumptions, that would also be allied with it.

However, being anti-left, you have so little in common with the left, maybe instead of complaining, just do your own thing? Autonomous zones will continue within the left and gain popular activity whether you complain about them or not. They won't ever fit your ideals and no one wants to spontaneously create your ideas on autonomy on any scale. It's fine. Peak experiences can still be achieved and instead of your focus on resentment politics, you could have a reading group that digs your perspective. This can be your springboard to more activities. I'd love to learn of any results.

i like most of that, but this seems problematic:

"you could have a reading group that digs your perspective."

as in, preaching to the choir? i've never been into that shit.

a reading group that digs your perspective could be a group of people who disagree with you but appreciate how you present your ideas, or whatever.
there's a balance in how ALL OF US interact socially, between people who agree with us on any given issue, and people who disagree but are interested/interesting, and people who disagree in uninteresting ways. reading groups obviously included.

tl/dr: "preaching to the choir" assumes preaching...

not sure i agree that "dig your perspective" would be the same as "...disagree but appreciate how you present..." in that case they dig your way of expressing your perspective, NOT your perspective per se. nitpicking?

also, my use of "preaching to the choir" doesn't imply literal "preaching", it implies surrounding oneself with others that already agree with one's perspective. that is what i was referring to.

i agree with your assessment of how our interactions can play out with others of differing perspectives (agree, disagree interestingly/critically, disagree uninterestingly).

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